


Coming With

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felton and Howard go out for drinks after work. One thing leads to another. Felton's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming With

**Author's Note:**

> Written for zaneetas

 

 

He doesn't remember exactly what happened. He hopes she doesn't either. He's never asked, but then again neither has she, and so he's just let the matter rest and told himself that was that.

There was drinking; he remembers that much. Lots of it. Not at the bar Munch and Pembleton and Lewis run. Go there and they'd have to acknowledge the guys. Talk to them, socialize, say things that needed saying. They'd have to smile and laugh and be in a group and act like cheerful, happy drunks for the group's sake, and neither of them was feeling particularly in a happy mood right about then. They needed a sad drunk, a numb drunk. Most importantly, a quiet drunk. And they weren't going to get that with their fellow detectives at the bar that was their baby.

He doesn't remember the name of the bar they finally found, after lots of aimless meandering and even more aimless chatter. It was some out-of-the-way dive, almost literally a hole in the wall, with low lights and low music and not much company. What little company there was was either drinking all by their respective lonesomes, presting endless, meaningless rounds of pool, or hiding in their own little hidey-hole booths with tacky vinyl upholstery, actively keeping their own counsel and tacitly encouraging others to keep their own.

Which was just as well, as far as Felton and Howard were concerned. Just the kind of place they'd been looking for; just the thing they needed that particular night, although neither discussed exactly why that was. At any rate, neither of them were in the mood to talk much that night. It had been a particularly gruesome case all around, with neither side particularly innocent and both more than a little guilty. Open and shut, but they'd gotten no joy out of putting it to bed. Seeing man inflict something like that on his fellow man, however guilty said other man had been, had left them both feeling like going home and scrubbing all their skin off.

But they didn't do that, although sometimes Beau wishes they had. Instead they drank cheap tequila with beers back in an out-of-the-way booth, and there was less and less talking, until finally Kay decided they should take a cab to her place and sleep it off, or Beau's wife would have his hide.

They didn't touch or speak to each other the entire way there. Kay told the cabbie where to turn now and then, but otherwise they kept their own counsel. And then they were in Kay's apartment, drinking Kay's whiskey, and then they finally did talk about it and both got emotional, and then he was holding Kay, trying to comfort her, and then they were kissing, and before he knew it, he was waking up the next morning in a bed that wasn't his own with a woman who was oh my god it was his _partner_ , the person he had to work with and see _every fucking day_ , what the _fuck_ had he been thinking? Beau, you _stupid fucking asshole_...

He remembered the morning after with excruciating clarity. Coffee, orange juice, and cereal with milk that was more than a little sketchy, in his opinion. Not that he voiced this opinion, or much else other than random shit in the paper or about the weather, to which Kay responded intermittently and briefly, if at all. When she didn't respond, he never pushed it. Just let her think over whatever she was thinking over and stirred his coffee long after all the cream had blended in. She never complained about the clinking noise it made. He would have.

The advantage to making the grave error of screwing your partner - as opposed to, say, some random stranger you picked up in a bar - is that if you've worked together long enough, there are things that don't need saying. You see each other more than you see your family or friends or spouses or lovers, ferchrissakes; chances are after long enough, you know them, and they know you, better than any of those people. That was how it came to be that an unspoken agreement arose between the two of them, a solemn oath to pretend last night had never happened, and to keep all this under their respective, proverbial, and from now on strictly professional, hats.

Sometimes, little flashbacks come back to him of their own accord. Not when he's thinking about sex, usually, and never when he's having it with someone else, God forbid. Just a little flash of memory, more in his senses than in his head, and then it's gone, leaving him dizzy and muddled and maybe a little bit scared.

The taste of Kay's skin. The smell of her shampoo. The way her line-dried sheets scratched his skin because she hadn't thought to put fabric softener. Her hands, warm and freckled and with that redhead-smell of perpetually sunburnt skin, showing him where to go, what to do, stilling when he got there or did something particularly right. Miles and miles of wavy red hair - all natural, as he found out but never told anyone, which he otherwise would have - laid out against the pillow, looking like it went on forever. The feel of her stubby nails on his back, near the end. Mumbled half-words and little gasps and a scream without sound, and then falling together panting and gasping and wet with sweat. The sound of her quiet breathing as he listened to her sleep.

He likes to think that he's gotten her out of his system, and he's sure she feels the same, if she remembers at all, which of course he never asked, because his mother always told him not to ask a question he didn't want to know the answer to. He knows there's a woman under that baggy man's suit, but since they're not in a very sexy line of work, it's easy to put that thought aside, and to tell himself it's gone forever.

All the same, since then he makes a point of remembering to call out the right name when he's with someone else. Can't be too careful.  
  


 


End file.
